CURRENT LITERATURE.
An Hist°, ical and Statistical Account of New South Wales. By John Dunmore Lang, D.D. (Sampson Low and Co.)—This is the fourth edition of a work which originally appeared in 1834, and which was republished in 1837, and again in 1852. The author's experience ex- tends to ten years further back. It is seldom that a writer can claim a personal knowledge of more than half the existence of the State of which he recounts the history. The work of a man so circumstanced will necessarily, supposing him to possess ordinary powers of ob-
serration and judgment, have much value, as supplying mate- rials for history. History itself will probably be better written when the past shall have had space to "orb itself into the perfect star." The events of the last five-and-twenty years have been added to the edition before us, and Mr. Lang can at least claim the competence of an eye-witness for relating them. Whether his judgment about Australian affairs is to be trusted we shall not take it upon ourselves to decide, but he is certainly not infallible about affairs in England. "There is the grossest ignorance," he writes, "on the part of the people of England of all classes on the subject of colonies generally." That we cannot undertake to deny. But we open our eyes with astonishment when he proceeds,—" There is no political maxim more widely or more willingly received in England than that colonies can be governed from London, quite as well as on the spot, by the autocrat for the time being of all the colonies, in Downing Street, as by the colonists themselves." Who is this " autocrat "? Not, surely, the official who calls himself "Secretary of State for the Colonies "? We are sure that there is hardly a politician in England who does not think that the Colonies had better govern themselves, and what is more, does not believe that most of them actually do so. Possibly that is part of our "gross ignorance."
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